September 23, 1998

Want Some Million-Dollar Ideas? I Got a Million of 'Em

By NEIL STRAUSS

HENEVER I look at my bank statement, I think of Ken Hakuta, a.k.a. Dr. Fad. Best known as the inventor of the Wacky Wall Walker, he made some $20 million from slime-covered
plastic creatures that ooze down vertical surfaces. The beauty of it is that Hakuta didn't even come up with the idea: all he did was license the toy from Japan for a fraction of the amount he made. Now he's a millionaire and
a prominent figure on the lecture and convention circuits. With one simple idea he achieved the American dream: money and fame.

There are countless Ken Hakutas -- inventors of the pet rock, sliced bread, the rolling lint remover, the better mousetrap. And I want to be one. But I'm too busy writing articles like this one to follow up on any get-rich-quick schemes,
and I can't seem to put the energy into starting a corporation dedicated to carrying out my ideas. So I have decided to give them away.

Please note that these are not stock-market schemes, illegal ruses or sci-fi dreams like hologram TV's or flying jet-powered backpacks. They rely solely on human ingenuity, the million-dollar idea that can come to life with just a little
capital. All of them can be done today, or tomorrow, if you're busy today. I will not copyright or patent any of these. With apologies to any other genius who, unbeknown to me, has tried one of these proposals, I urge you to capitalize
them. Just have the consideration to cut me in for a small percentage.

There are millions of dollars to be made in dating services, of which thousands have emerged. But there is another side to be exploited: the undating service. The goal would be to break up relationships as painlessly as possible -- no tears,
no stalking, no relapses. Couples would hire the company, though anyone thinking of starting an undating service that promises clients to break up other people's relationships may want to consult a criminal lawyer first.

Some clever wag has beaten me to the idea of portable gyms: trainers who park outside your home in vans full of exercise equipment. But no one has come up with portable baby sitters. Tired of having to constantly call home during a dinner
date to check on your child or to leave a movie early to deal with a small emergency? With a portable baby sitter, your child can follow you around on your date or outing in an R.V. with toys, a bed and a licensed sitter. Now you can look
in on your little one during theater intermissions and deal with a crisis without abandoning your plans.

Copyright millennium slogans or register Web site domain names that corporations will eventually want to buy from you. Some examples of slogans include "A new car for a new millennium" or "Relief for the morning after the millennium."
For Web sites, you could try to cut yourself in on a piece of Hakuta's millions and register a wackywallwalker.com.

The inventions of tow ropes and chairlifts revolutionized skiing, enabling entrepreneurs to open ridiculously overpriced ski resorts. So where are the surf resorts? Tow ropes, jet skis and above-water conveyer belts could drop surfers off
at their favorite wave and save them from exhausting, time-consuming paddling. Of course, some surfers will complain that paddling to the wave is integral to the sport, but soon surfing anywhere besides a resort will seem as antiquated
as hiking uphill to ski.

Rush-hour tunnel traffic from Manhattan to New Jersey is the bane of any commuter's existence. So start a private, expensive car ferry traversing the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey, perhaps from Battery Park City, catering
to business people for whom time is more important than money.

The best entrepreneurs come up with products nobody has heard of and then persuade the public that it can't live without them. Here is my candidate: by developing a system to measure the sense of smell (akin to the eye-chart test), an
entrepreneur can make a fortune by inventing smelling aids for people with deficient olfactory nerves.

Create a line of address books, cell phones, wallets and purses that, like cordless telephones, beep when they're lost. Even better, for obsessive message-checkers not satisfied with pagers, devise a key chain or a small toy that lights
up whenever their answering machine takes a call. In addition, a huge market has opened up in Japan for cellular phone accessories that could be exploited in America: different styles of straps and antennae, trinkets to make phones ring
differently and lights that flash when the phone rings.

Become an apartment broker in a competitive city like New York or San Francisco. But instead of representing realtors or buildings, start a trustworthy company that represents renters. They can tell you exactly what they want, then you find
it and pay a deposit to reserve the apartment until they can see it. To corner the market, you could pay apartment owners a fee to give you a copy of their listing on the same day they send it to the newspaper.

There are sperm banks, but no public egg banks. These would be for working women who don't want to have children until they retire. This way, women can finally stop the ticking of that biological clock by depositing an egg when they're
in their 20's or 30's. The egg will then be preserved until a woman is ready to rear a child.

The best ice cream in the world is Bertillon, a French delicacy with flavors so precise that anyone marketing it in America could revolutionize the ice-cream business the way Jelly Bellys cornered the jelly bean market. This is not a joke,
but a way to a better society.

One reason people drive when they're drunk is because they don't want to have to take a cab home and then wake up in the morning without their car. By creating an 800-IM-DRUNK number in car-oriented cities like Los Angeles, this
problem could be solved. The service would drive a chauffeur to a restaurant, club or house to take the inebriated client home (or even to another bar) in his or her own car.

Through shrewd marketing, create a taboo for a new body part, like the bellybutton. Then market underwear, swimsuits and other fashion accessories to cover that part.

I was recently notified that someone had taken my idea of making custom fortune cookies for parties. But kids' dolls could be personalized in a similar way by having a talking toy like Tickle Me Elmo or Teletubby and replacing its voice
chip with a homemade one. It could either have personalized messages ("Get to work, George") or just undoll-like comments. ("Gee whiz, cover up your bellybutton, it looks obscene.")

Space prohibits me from elaborating on more ideas. But with hundreds of thousands of people reading this, it seems very likely that within the next 24 hours these baker's-dozen recommendations will soon be patented and put into development.

So for those of you still needing a million-dollar idea, here are few more: market in-line skates in China; create a national health-insurance program for pets; start an on-line databank guaranteeing computer file safety; start a rent-a-family
company for lonely elderly people as well as for people trying to look responsible at work-related social functions; market a nonalcoholic "Crangina" drink that combines cranberry juice and ginger ale (try it, it's good);
write "The Straight Woman's Guide to Picking Up Gay Men"; start a national chain of video stores where tapes can be returned at any branch; create the appearance of being rich by writing books filled with impractical
get-rich-quick schemes that will make everyone else around you go bankrupt.